Author: photog

Tom’s World – 13JAN2026 – Sony Photo Fails

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TomD

The A7IV Sony camera is glitching again, at least to the extent of displaying the “not compatible with camera” message that started the whole thing. I’m pretty sure Sony originated the whole thing in an effort to stop the aftermarket purchase of 2nd party batteries. After all, Sony wants close to $90 for a NP FZ100 battery whereas you can get a compatible battery on Amazon with a charger (which sony does not give you) for $24. I’ll just bet that my glitch originates from a piece of Sony 2nd party battery detection software gone astray.
In the “Adding coals to Newcastle” department, my E mount 90mm f2.8 macro has totally failed. It makes a horrible mechanical razzing noise along with a coarse vibration and, of course, does not function. I sent it to a Sony “authorized” repair center who just received and inspected the camera and concluded that it needs a “4th group assembly”, $576. I’ve had the lens for a number of years but macro represents <5% of my shooting, so it has only maybe 2000-4000 snaps in its lifespan, a small fraction of what I shot with its A mount 100mm macro predecessor. When I called them about it, the Indian sounding service rep assured me the problem will not reoccur because it is/was a common problem with recent Sony lenses and that particular magnetic focusing mechanism is common to a lot of lenses and has since gone through total redesign. Do you know what Sony lenses cost?
In my history with Minolta/Sony cameras/lenses over a number of decades, my previous defect-failure rate is 0.00%
it may be just me but  doesn’t that constitute a tacit admission on Sony’s part that the commonly failing mechanism should have been a recall/warranty  issue. Sounds like grounds for a class action.
Oh yeah, and on top, when you attempt to prepay for the repair, the Sony Authorized Service Center wants a tip and makes it quite hard to pay the invoice without paying one. And they haven’t done s*** for me so far save irritating me.

Ah, Wilderness! (1935) – An OCF Classic Movie Review

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Eugene O’Neill, the playwright, was known for his psychologically dark and depressing tragedies that dwelt on alcoholism, drug addiction and family dysfunction.  But he did write one comedy which was sort of an attempt at autobiography (sort of).

And that was “Ah, Wilderness!”  Eventually this play was translated into a motion picture starring Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery and even a very young Mickey Rooney.

It’s the story of a family; the Millers, living in a small New England town in 1906.  Barrymore is the family patriarch Nat and his wife Essie is played by the always amusing Spring Byington.  Their youngest son Tommy is played by Micky Rooney.  Beery plays Nat’s drunken and lazy brother Sid who works as a “reporter” on Nat’s town newspaper.  The rest of the children are played by relative unknowns but in general, the acting and direction is quite good.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

The event of the movie is the graduation from high school of the next to oldest son Richard.  He’s the class valedictorian and an “intellectual” whose reading of modernist fiction, poetry and political thought gets him into trouble with his parents and his girlfriend’s father.  Swinburne, G.B. Shaw, Oscar Wilde and Karl Marx provide Richard with plenty of quotes to rankle his elders.  But when Muriel McComber’s father Dave finds a Swinburne poem among his daughter’s effects he orders her to break off her romance with Richard and pulls his advertisement from Nat’s newspaper.

To get back at the world Richard goes out with one of his older brother’s friends to a saloon and gets drunk and fraternizes with a chorus girl who sits on his lap and soaks him for drinks and some money.  After he gets thrown out by the bartender for being underaged he show up home drunk and depressed much to his family’s chagrin.  The end of the movie revolves around Nat explaining the facts of life with respect to women and living a decent life to his son.  Of course, Richard and Muriel re-unite and even her father comes around to approving of their romance.

In between Richard’s problems we’re witness to the drunken escapades of Nat’s brother Sid (played by Wallace Beery) and his on-again, off-again courtship of Lily Davis who must be Mrs. Miller’s cousin.  Beery performs a very over-the-top rendition of his drunken oaf character and Lily seems to take solace from chastising Sid for his drinking and career failures.

Alright, so why do I like this movie?  Many of the exterior shots of the small town were filmed in Grafton, MA.  And remarkably the town still looks surprisingly the same after almost a hundred years.  I know the area very well from an earlier phase of my life in New England and find these views of the town incredibly nostalgic.  So that’s one thing the movie has going for it (admittedly a highly specific point with a very small audience of appreciation).  The other virtue the movie possesses is the charm of a small town from the very dawn of the twentieth century.  There’s a simplicity to the activities that still has an attraction to some of us looking back from the awful alienated place we find ourselves in today.  There’s a five-minute scene of the children shooting off fire works on Fourth of July morning that brings me back over sixty years to my childhood.  And the awfulness of the high school graduation talent-show-scene makes me laugh for its similarity to some of the shows I have attended.  There’s just a thick slice of good-natured old Americana that cheers my heart.  So, who is this movie for?  Probably just me, unless what you read here piques your curiosity.

Martyrs of Various Sorts

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So, what to talk about tonight?  Well, the crazies are out in force throughout the blue states.  I read they’ve set up a “no-go” zone in Minneapolis.  I imagine that won’t go so well.  When ICE shows up to arrest the illegal aliens among them, there is sure to be violence and probably deaths.  Similar stuff is happening in all the other crazy places like Portland and Philadelphia.  I heard about the two illegal aliens that got shot going up against ICE.  So, I guess this is the status quo from now on.  I give Trump and his people all my sympathy for having to do a really awful job.  And I’m very glad that they haven’t given up.

As far as the Iranian and Venezuelan and the Greenlandian fronts, what can I say?  Venezuela is easy.  They’ll do as they’re told.  Iran is going to be interesting.  It’s obvious that the Israelis have infiltrated the country and have in the last couple of days begun assassinating IRGC commanders, even using drones in the process.  If that is the case then I assume they’ll start lending support to the rebellion.  I guess they’ll provide them with guns and intel about troop movements and whatever other aid they can muster.  But how this ends up is anyone’s guess.  The Islamic Republic has been a nexus for evil and death since I was a very young man.  I would dearly love for this to be their last gasp.  And I wouldn’t even care if the Ayatollah was packed off to Moscow or anywhere else they’d have him.  Just having Iran as a normal country would be an amazing improvement for the whole world.  Hezbollah, Hamas and all the other crazies would be deprived of a base and a source of funding.  And all the countries around Iran could finally relax and try to fix their own problems instead of battling the religious maniacs that the ayatollahs kept unleashing throughout the Middle East.

As for Greenland, who cares?  Does it really matter one way or another?  For pity’s sake it’s just a big chunk of ice in the middle of the Arctic.  If Trump wants to haggle with the Danes, let him.  No harm, no foul.

I finally saw the video from the point of view of the ICE agent who shot the female driver.  Her crazy “wife” was taunting the ICE agents and it looks like the driver just sped into the agent.  I wouldn’t fault the shooter at all.  A car is a deadly weapon when you drive it at someone and a cop knows that someone who tries to run him over is basically asking to be shot.  I’m sad for her kids especially ending up in the custody of the crazy lesbian who married their mother but Minneapolis and places like it are full of martyrs to the cause of Leftism.  They need useful idiots to do stupid things like what she did.  The question today is how many more like her are there willing to get shot.  We’ll know soon.

Ancient European History – Part 4

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At the end of the last installment of this essay I said:

“And the stalemate between the Left and Right is maddening to anyone who wants this country fixed.  We seem to be at a dead end.  What’s the answer?”

I think the answer is we’re not one nation.  We’re at least two (and maybe several more than two) nations trapped in the same constitutional system that requires unanimity.  The people who are the majority in the blue states and the people who are the majority in the red states want diametrically opposite things.  It’s not just that they disagree on the details of how things should be run.  They want different realities on the ground.

Right now, people in Minnesota, Illinois, New York and California are actively conspiring to battle ICE agents to prevent them from fulfilling their lawful duty to deport illegal immigrants.  And while Biden was in the White House, he used his office to allow illegal immigrants to enter the United States in the millions.  These two examples underscore that the two major political positions in this country have no middle ground and cannot find a way forward that will satisfy both sides.

And this is just one of a large number of issues that are irreconcilable differences between the Left and Right.  Social, economic and moral differences exist and will not go away.  What seems clear to me is that some change is needed to allow the different groups to exist separately and peacefully on the same continent.

And actually, that doesn’t seem to be a difficult situation to create.  Look at the present situation between Canada and the United States.  If you met people living on either side of the US/Canada border (say between Ontario and New York State) you probably couldn’t tell them apart if they were mixed in a room.  They’re essentially the same culturally and even ethnically.  They belong to two separate countries.  But they can cross back and forth over the border and the companies that do business around there can buy and sell their services on both sides of this border.

The same kind of arrangement would be possible between two or more successor states existing where the United States is now.  The only thing that would change would be the status of citizens in each of these new states.  Citizens of the blue states wouldn’t be citizens of the red states and vice versa.  So, no one would be moving from California to Texas anymore without the equivalent of a green card.  Now theoretically the blue states would have this open border mentality and would allow anyone in the world including red state citizens to just settle in their country willy-nilly like they do now.  But I predict that once the split is made the blue states will change their immigration policy at least with respect to the red states for spite.  Which is fine.  But I would guess that once they aren’t spiting the red states through their open border policies anymore, they’ll probably re-evaluate how happy they are with this status quo.

But immigration is only one aspect of what would drive a separation between the red and the blue areas of this country.  We can talk about social issues and whether this would cause a separation into two nations or possibly more in the next installment.